Brewer's: Drum

A crowded evening party, a contraction of “drawing-room” (dr'-'oom). Cominges, the French ambassador, writing to Louis XIV., calls these assemblies drerums and driwromes. (See Rout, Hurricane.)

“The Comte de Broglie . . . goes sometimes to the drerums,and sometimes to the driwrome of the Princess of Wales.” —Nineteenth Century: Comte de Cominges; Sept., 1891, p.461.

“It is impossible to live in a drum.” —Lady M. W.Montagu.

John Drum's entertainment. Turning an unwelcome guest out of doors. The allusion is to drumming a soldier out of a regiment.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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